America's Lighthouse Keepers: Families, Women and African American Crews

Emblem of the United States Lighthouse Service

Most of the lighthouse keepers we picture worked for the United States Lighthouse Service, founded in 1789. It came from the first public works act of the first Congress, which moved existing lighthouses from state control to the federal government.

From customs houses to the Coast Guard

The job

Keeping a light wasn't quite a 24-hour job — but it could be. A keeper's day usually began before dawn and ran well past dusk. Besides repairs and routine chores, keepers had to be ready for emergencies, including shipwrecks.

The core duty was keeping the light running on schedule — a schedule that varied with each station's location and weather. In severe storms, the light burned around the clock until the storm passed. The Service issued rules over the years, such as the 1927 Instructions to Employees of the United States Lighthouse Service, covering upkeep and emergencies but also conduct and the required uniform.

Not just a lonely man in a slicker

The popular image is a solitary, grizzled white man in a rain slicker. The reality was broader:

• Families often lived with keepers, in quarters attached to the lighthouse or in a house nearby, and helped with the work.
• Women frequently shared their husbands' duties, and many inherited the post when a husband or father died or could no longer serve — sometimes keeping it for years, or for life.
• Through the middle of the 19th century, African Americans commonly assisted keepers, as paid servants or as enslaved people.

As the status of African Americans changed in the mid-to-late 19th century, so did the staffs of lighthouses and of life-saving stations (run by the U.S. Life-Saving Service). The Lighthouse Service hired newly freed people at Southern stations, and by the late 1870s some lighthouses had African American keepers and several had all–African American staffs.

The Pea Island Life-Saving Station in Rodanthe, North Carolina, became the first in the country with an all–African American crew under an African American commander, Richard Etheridge, appointed in 1880.

The last keeper

Automation gradually made keepers unnecessary. Today every U.S. lighthouse is automated except one: Boston Light, in Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area. A 1989 law requires it to stay staffed, so it still has a keeper.

Further reading

• United States Life-Saving Service historical bibliography, U.S. Coast Guard

Sources

Based on "Lighthouse Keepers," National Park Service, Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The article spells the Pea Island commander's name "Ethridge"; it is Richard Etheridge.